My FPV Ground Station

Thanks Mike! I will take you up on that! Hope to see you at the swap this Saturday. I'm looking forward to that. Just hope I don't buy anything.

Finally some progress! It's been a month to the day since I started this thread and I just now got the mounting plate done. I'll spare you all the excuses. Anyway, tonight I decided I was going to finish this stupid plate no matter what! It's 3AM, but it's done. I should be able to start bolting things together now. I'm attaching a couple pics of the finished plate. For anyone that might not have discovered it yet, you can put a pretty nice finish on your project with an oscillating sander and some 150 grit silicon carbide paper. It's a great way to cover up a lot of sins if you're using scrap metal like I am. It will cover up all but the worst scratches. When you're done sanding, if you scrub the aluminum down with a paper towel and some dish washing detergent (add very little water), you can seal the surface. I'm not sure exactly what the chemical reaction is with the metal, but it seems to keep it bright and clean looking forever. It's the next best thing to anodizing. Wish I had a picture of this metal before I cleaned it up. It didn't look so hot. Pretty nice now!

...Tiger

But DO NOT use warm water, dish washing soap and a stainless steel sink on a freshly machined part that you are going to have Anodized, yeah, it sucks to find out after having 60 parts come back in a black and aluminum camo design.

PP - Only rich people anodize. This is for us poor folk. Really... If you're going to ano, don't let anything get on your parts!

...Tiger

Just so you can understand why it took me a whole month to get the drilling done, I've uploaded a video of the plate in the drill press. Now you can see how hard I was working and I know you'll understand why it took me minutes and minutes to get this done.

...Tiger

Never gets old watching those make chips...

So... I think we're finally approaching the finish line. Got everything together (almost) and working. The only thing I really have left is to cut about three feet of cable off my patch antenna, install a "N" connector (was SMA), and screw it down. Should get everything buttoned up tomorrow and start working on the transmit end of things. I'm probably going to start by mounting the camera on my tracked robot and then progress to the Phantom after that.

...Tiger

Just for fun... Here is the tracked robot I'm going to install the camera on to play with my new hardware. Once I get my confidence up, I'll install everything on the Phantom. Made this robot several years ago and have had a lot of fun with it as you can see.

...Tiger

Got the antenna cable shortened tonight and buttoned up the chassis. I think I'm about ready for some bench and field testing (finally!). I do have a few documentation details to clean up. I still plan to update the CAD drawings with the top and bottom plates and a few other minor changes so I can post the final design file here. I ended up making some thumb screws to attach the antenna. First I used regular screws and then I got to thinking it might be really nice to be able to get in and out of this thing without tools. I wanted to keep the screws light so I made them out of aluminum. I knew aluminum threads wouldn't hold up for long so I to pressed 6-32 stainless cap screws into them. That was easy to do and solved the problem. Now I need to get the transmitter and camera going. I'll probably keep posting here as that part progresses even though it's really not the "ground station".

...Tiger

Looks great!

Well done! That's downright sexy!